Summary
Alberto and Levi discuss their work, comrades, food, and the weather as they walk back to the living quarters. Lorenzo brings them extra soup rations, and they procure a 'menaschka' (a bucket-like pot). They wish to provide something in return to Lorenzo for his kindness, and decide to try to have his shoes mended. The friends also discuss various exploits they have undertaken with the end goal of procuring more food rations. Levi has stolen and sold brooms, while Alberto performs what he calls "Operation File." At the tool store, Alberto borrows a large file, then sells it to a civilian for two smaller ones, and returns one of the smaller ones while keeping the other to sell. Alberto also uses his job to gain extra rations. Every morning, he is given a bucket of pliers, screwdrivers, and several hundred celluloid labels in different colors in order to tag different pipes. In exchange for bread rations, Alberto neatly color-codes each hut. The German Blockältesters in charge, according to Levi, "love order, systems, bureaucracy...[and] glittering, many-coloured objects." Since no one else has access to the equipment, Alberto has no competitors in this endeavor.
On one of the marches home, the prisoners are forced to stop and witness the hanging of a man who allegedly helped blow up a crematorium at Birkenau. The condemned man cries out, "Comrades, I am the last one!" before he is hanged. Levi states that this hanging brings the man glory, not infamy as the Germans intended. Levi and Alberto feel ashamed at not possessing the defiance to rebel on such a grand scale.
Levi falls ill with scarlet fever in January of 1945, and is sent into Ka-Be. In the infirmary, Levi struggles with a high fever and is fortunate to have a bunk to himself, as the rooms in Ka-Be are overcrowded. He is glad to have the time to rest, and does not fear the possibility of succumbing to the illness or being selected for the crematorium. Two Frenchmen named Arthur and Charles are also in the infirmary. On the fifth day, a barber called Askenazi arrives to shave Levi and the other patients. Askenazi alludes to the coming evacuation and liberation of the camp. Later, a doctor tells the patients that all who can walk will depart the following day on a twelve-mile march, that everyone will be given triple bread ration, and that the remaining patients will be left to their fate. Two Hungarian patients, weak with sickness, decide to go on the march. Levi writes that he found out later that these Hungarian patients were killed just hours after joining the march. The doctor leaves Levi a French novel, telling him to give it back the next time they met. Levi hates him for this, as he took it as a sign that the patients who stayed were doomed.
Alberto tells Levi goodbye, and he leaves with all the rest of the healthy prisoners. The friends do not expect to be separated for very long. Twenty thousand prisoners (including Alberto) from different camps were evacuated, expecting to live. But they all were killed.
For Levi and those who remained in the infirmary, the next ten days were "outside both world and time." The kitchen stops operating after the night of the evacuation, and gradually the temperature drops as the central-heating plant is abandoned. A few SS men remain, and classify the remaining prisoners into Jews and non-Jews. No one is surprised that this love for classification on the part of the Germans persists until the very end.
Levi gathers blankets from the neighboring dysentery ward, figuring he and the others in his infirmary may as well sleep comfortably as they don't know what the future holds. At around eleven pm, the lights go out and a bombardment begins. Some empty huts catch fire. Patients staying in a hut threatened by fire attempt to seek shelter in Levi's hut, but it is impossible to take them in. The Germans leave, and Levi and the Frenchmen work to find coal, wood, and food. Despite the competition from other patients who had remained behind, Levi and the Frenchmen find sacks of potatoes and an iron stove. Levi uses a wheelbarrow to transport the stove back to their room. On the way, he encounters an SS man riding a motorcycle. Fortunately, the man does not stop him.
The eleven patients of the Infektionsabteilung (infectious disease department) are the only ones whose room has a stove. This creates a bond between them, and Levi, Arthur, and Charles are very satisfied with their work. The next day, Levi and Charles must go to search for food despite ongoing illness because they have only enough rations for two days. They find cabbages, turnips, salt, and a can of water, and Levi later finds a charged battery. That evening, they use the battery to light their room, and outside witness Germans fleeing the Russians.
The next morning, Levi does not wish to get up from his blankets due to feeling sick, but Charles calls him to work. They mobilize some of the other sick patients to help peel the vegetables, and go out to procure wood and water. As there is no one to ensure its upkeep, the Ka-Be is fouled by the patients suffering from dysentery. Human waste is everywhere, and Levi and the others worry about the spread of disease and lack of access to water should the snow melt. As they cook soup, they have to turn away starving patients who come to the door. Only one remains, a Parisian tailor who sews winter clothes for Levi, Arthur, and Charles in exchange for soup. Arthur diligently ensures hygienic practices in their hut to the best of everyone's ability.
Levi and Charles explore the SS camp and find valuable things: soup, beer, vodka, medicines, reading materials, and eiderdowns. Later, they find out that SS men entered the camp and killed a group of French men who had settled in the dining hall of the SS-Waffe. The ground was too frozen for anyone to dig graves, and no one had the energy to try. Levi's hut is very close to the dysentery ward, and a few Italians implore him for help. He brings them water and leftover soup, resulting in the entire ward shouting Levi's name day and night in a variety of languages. He feels simultaneously like crying and cursing them.
In the middle of the night, a typhus patient named Lakmaker has a terrible case of diarrhea. Charles and Levi do their best to clean and contain it, as it could spread the disease. They also don't want to leave Lakmaker in his misery. The next day, their supply of potatoes runs out, but there is a rumor that a trench filled with potatoes lies outside the barbed wire. A group exits the camp and locates the potatoes, and the ward with those recovering from operations goes on an expedition to the English prisoner-of-war camp, where they locate a great deal of culinary treasures. This begins a commerce—Levi and the others make and exchange candles for lard and flour.
Another patient in their room named Sómogyi dies a slow and labored death as the others wait for the Russians to arrive. Levi and the Frenchmen help each other survive not only through their physical efforts to procure food, but through the sharing of emotional strength. The other ten patients (including Levi and the Frenchmen) survive, and the Russians arrive. The book ends with Levi sharing that Arthur reached his family safely and Charles took up his teaching profession again. Levi and Charles exchanged letters over the years, and Levi hopes to see him again one day.
In "A Conversation with Primo Levi by Philip Roth," Roth reveals that Levi went back to Turin after gaining his freedom, and worked in a paint factory as a research chemist and manager. Though Roth describes the conditions at the factory as unsightly, they are still a huge improvement from the likes of what is described in Levi's biography. Levi lives in his parents' home with his wife Lucia. Apart from his year in Auschwitz and a few months after his liberation, Levi lived in the same apartment his whole life. Levi's children live close by.
Primo Levi died on April 11th, 1987 after a fall from his third-story apartment in Turin. There is debate on whether or not this was a suicide.
Analysis
The menaschka that Alberto and Levi acquire is not just a pot—it represents status as a "diploma of nobility." In an earlier chapter, Levi provides case samples of individuals determined to survive the camps, and these same people seek to ally themselves with Levi and Alberto. Survival is the main concern in the camp, but Levi is awed by the fact of a rebellious act that took place in Birkenau: several hundred men, "helpless and exhausted slaves" just like those in Levi's camp, "found in themselves the strength to act, to mature the fruits of their hatred." This metaphor of "the fruits of their hatred" naturalizes the resistance despite the fact that Levi stated how the exhausting and abusive conditions in the camps leave little energy for anything else, let alone a revolt.
Levi and Alberto feel the weight of shame after witnessing a public hanging. Their own acts of resistance were focused on acquiring more food rations, and though these efforts initially brought a sense of pride, the friends now feel shame at not defying the Nazis on a larger scale. Levi directly addresses the Germans using the second person perspective, writing, "Here we are, docile under your gaze; from our side you have nothing more to fear; no acts of violence, no words of defiance, not even a look of judgement." In other words, Levi and Alberto feel as though their humanity and manhood have been broken.
Big changes arrive as the camp is evacuated, and as always, the prisoners make calculated decisions to try to survive. Levi remains in the camp due to weakness from scarlet fever, but this ends up being his road to survival. Alberto leaves with the other prisoners. The ones departing feel optimistic as the world around them (the hated one constructed by the Germans) begins to collapse. But the so-called evacuation march turns into a death march. Levi continues to write in a detached and formal tone as he shares the way that the twenty thousand or so evacuees were murdered, stating, "Perhaps someone will write their story one day."
The German abandonment of the camp does not ensure Levi's survival (or the survival of those who remained). Levi and the Frenchmen leave their hut in search of supplies, and though Arthur passes out from the cold, Charles hurries to return the potatoes safely to their room before taking care of his friend. However, rules concerning social relations begin to shift. The other patients in the hut supplement Levi and the Frenchmen with their own bread, which would have been inconceivable just a few days before. According to Levi, this showed that the law of the Lager was dead. It was "the first human gesture that occurred" among the group, marking the change by which the survivors transformed "from Häftlinge to men again."
The prospect of the snow melting is a source of anxiety for Levi and the Frenchmen due to the fact that disease would quickly spread and there would be no access to water. This somewhat parallels Levi's meditation on how anything can be rendered positive in an earlier chapter. Despite the deathly cold, Levi and the others wish for the snow to remain.
Levi and the Frenchmen help each other and the other inhabitants of their hut, but they cannot be concerned with everyone's survival. They turn away the starving patients who come begging, only giving soup to a man who sews them winter clothes in exchange. Levi begins to think about returning home, and he encourages the others to do the same. Survival seems possible, but it is essential that everyone try to follow hygienic practices so as not to spread disease (particularly dysentery and typhus).
For the first time in nearly a year, Levi stands outside the barbed wire as a free man without armed guards or fences between himself and his distant home. The breach in the barbed wire represents liberty from the Germans, selections, slave labor, beatings, roll-calls, and abuse. The discovery of potatoes in trenches is celebrated, but after everything the prisoners have gone through, they need more than potatoes to regain their strength. In the hut, Sómogyi offers Levi and the Frenchmen his bread, knowing that he will die soon. They all wait for the Russians to arrive. All feelings, including expectation, become tiring. Conditioned by the brutality of the Nazi camp, Levi and the others proclaim aloud the arrival of the Russians, but don't actually believe it in their hearts. When suffering reaches a limit, the ability to hope is dulled.
Towards the end of the book, Levi skips ahead to recount how Arthur happily reunited with his family and Charles took up his old teaching profession. Levi and Charles exchanged long letters over the years. The last sentiment of the book is Levi's hope to reunite with Charles in person. After all the despair outlined in the book, it is significant that it ends with a small hope.
In Philip Roth's conversation with Levi, Roth describes Levi as an "artist-chemist." An example of this can be read in the first sentence of his short-story collection, The Periodic Table, which reads, "Distilling is beautiful." Distilling is a chemical process that is also used as a metaphor for extracting the essential meaning or most important aspects of something. This demonstrates Levi's dual interests and talents, and the way he intertwines his love for art and for science. Levi also made wire sculptures with material from his laboratory.
Levi tells Roth about his belief that human beings are "biologically built for an activity that is aimed toward a goal and that idleness, or aimless work (like Auschwitz's Arbeit), gives rise to suffering and to atrophy." This explains a great deal of Levi's internal despair that accompanied the physical suffering of life in Auschwitz. However, his "practical, humane scientific mind" assisted his survival. Despite Levi's proclamation in the book that his tendency to think too much was going to get him killed, this civilized and scientific perspective enabled his survival. Luck also played a role.
Levi speaks about the mutual reinforcement of being a chemist and a writer. Survival in Auschwitz follows the style or model of the "weekly report" commonly used in factories. Its lack of jargon makes it accessible to any reader, and as noted earlier, Levi's detached and logical tone is meant to assist his credibility. Levi's other books describe his life before and after Auschwitz, and his books were translated into multiple languages.
